


Souvenirs

by ndnickerson



Category: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:12:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames has a chance to get away for a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Souvenirs

**Author's Note:**

> [](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/profile)[**oxoniensis**](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/)'s [Porn Battle](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/10575.html); you can also find the story in its natural habitat [here](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/10575.html?thread=1302863#t1302863). Contains adult situations. Spoilers for aired episodes through mid-Season 8. Vaguely alludes to in my blood there's gasoline and Immured but requires no knowledge for comprehension. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Alex's sister-in-law enters some contest, and a week later she has tickets to the wine country in California. She's always had great luck like that, miles of leg and a winning smile. Except Hannah isn't quite lucky enough when it comes to using that extra ticket; her friends have children and Jimmy can't go, and Alex knows she's the last person on the list, by the amount of wheedling Hannah does, and Alex lets her, just lets her twist in the wind for a few minutes, because it's nice to have someone begging her for something that doesn't involve a dead body.

Besides, the last time off she had that didn't involve a suspect or a psych eval was when she was having her sister's baby.

Eames studies her partner, across their desks, Hannah's gushing descriptions of spa treatments and massages falling on deaf ears. Bobby's hair was different then. Bobby himself was different then. Now he's like something's been beaten out of him.

She supposes that in a way it has.

"All right, all right," Alex forces a grudge in her voice. "I'll go."

Surely Bobby can get along on autopilot for five days and six nights. Alex makes Ross promise that if he has to pair Goren up with someone, it won't be Nichols. She dreamed a few nights before that Bobby, Nichols with his cocky grin, and Wally Stevens had all been in the same room, trying to out-quirk each other, and that was enough to jerk her awake, gasping, from a dead sleep. She can just imagine that Bobby and Nichols as partners will either kill each other or build a fort out of office furniture, in the middle of the bullpen, and become blood brothers.

Alex frowns in Ross's doorway. "And keep them away from sharp things," she says, her brow furrowed, and leaves without further explanation.

\--

Bobby insists on taking her to the airport. He shows up in the Mustang, and he's too quiet. His fingers drum the steering wheel, long fingers. He's tense, like maybe he's just stopped smoking again.

"I'll take a cab back," she says, tugging her bag out of his backseat, as the traffic cops frown at him. "Thanks for the ride."

His face is blank, and then he smiles, half of it hidden in his beard. She is not fond of the beard. She is much fonder of five-o'clock shadow, and his having actual damn _expressions_ on his face, and one out of two ain't bad.

"Have a good trip, Eames."

She's in the terminal and he's out of sight, and Hannah is heading toward her, a rolling suitcase briskly in tow, when Alex realizes she can't actually remember when _he_ last had a vacation that didn't involve a suspect or a psych eval or Tate Correctional, which had probably been the jackpot as far as mandatory suspension was concerned.

Alex has a sudden vision of him with her, playing one of their little games. He'd be in an ascot or something else similarly arrogant, wafting the scent of wine and pronouncing a bouquet simply astounding, or whatever the hell, and she'd have her arm tucked in his, laughing up into his eyes.

She misses playing married more than she should. Maybe she just misses who he was during those little games.

\--

It's unspeakably glorious to wake in the morning naturally, to stretch, to not bother reaching for her cell phone. To be able to actually turn her cell phone off. To have an itinerary that involves a facial, massage, and car service to a local winery, and that's it, no embezzled money or cool splayed limbs at the bottom of a staircase or standing just outside the crime scene tape, blowing warmth back into her hands, watching her partner approach and wondering if the drawn, exhausted look on his face is from too little sleep or too much scotch.

She manages to make it all the way through her morning shower before turning her phone back on.

\--

He doesn't call until the second night. Alex is very fond of the merlot, she has found, and when they come around with another sample she happily watches it splash into the bowl of her glass. She digs her cell out of her tiny, borderline-functionless purse and beams at the display when she sees his name there.

"Hello?"

"What are you wearing?"

Alex's cheeks are flushed from the wine, from surprise. His voice has a hint of warmth, and more than a hint of laughter. "A little black dress."

"_The_ little black dress?"

"_The_ little black dress," she agrees, sweeping her hair out of her eyes before she takes another sip of wine. "But not my piece."

"That's a shame."

"What am I missing?"

"A sniper taking out upscale escorts." She can see him shrug, in her mind's eye. "Wheeler stomped out of the bullpen this morning."

"Don't tell me the captain's fair-haired child did wrong." Alex finishes her glass.

"I don't know. Your desk looks so empty," he says quietly, and whatever's behind him is so quiet that she can't tell if he's still at work, staring at her empty seat, the way Bishop had told her he did while she was gone. She tells him to go home and he doesn't protest that he's already there, and it would infuriate her, the fact that she has to hold his hand while she's three thousand miles away, if it didn't give her that same warm rush of affection for him, for her place in his life.

She's stopped taking it for granted, and at least that's something.

\--

"What are you wearing?"

"A bathrobe, Bobby," she sighs, rubbing the sole of one foot against the side of the other, soft Asian-inspired music chiming in the background, the fountain gurgling intrusively at her other side. "Cucumber slices. Something that feels like whipped cream cheese and smells like mint. What about you?"

"The dot tie."

She gave him the dot tie when they had been partners for only a few months and it was Christmas and she didn't want to form anything lasting because she was still arguing with herself over requesting another partner.

"And I'll bet it looks damn sexy, Detective," Alex says, a little surprised at herself, but it's all worth it when he laughs.

\--

"What are you wearing, Alex?"

"Nothing," she replies, very glad that Hannah reconnected with her old college roommate and is spending the night in a bed &amp; breakfast thirty miles away. "The sheet."

"Pull it down," he says, his voice low and rough. It's been a while since he's done this at all, she can tell, but never with her. She puts him on speaker and gently pulls the sheet down, so that it glances over her already-puckered nipples. Two minutes later they're halfway through and her phone starts to beep, angrily announcing that its battery is dying, and, cursing the whole way, her thighs slick, she trips over her shoes and hops across the floor, pawing through her suitcase to find her charger. Which should kill the mood, it really should.

Except all she has to think about is his fingers tapping on the steering wheel and that hotel room in Seoul and the look on his face when she woke up in the hospital, in that terrible shuddering time after. Not what came later.

She gasps into the pillow, her fingers working madly between her thighs, as she comes for him.

"Have you found him yet," she gasps, still trying to catch her breath, her fingers still curled between her legs, forehead resting against the cool sheet.

"Three hours ago," Bobby says, a little out of breath himself, and he didn't even have to ask.

\--

He picks her up from the airport without asking, this time in their SUV, and she catches herself thinking maybe it's for the roomy backseat, but they both know what goes on back there and she has no intention of contracting Hep B just for a quickie. She has a new pair of sunglasses perched on her head and a dusting of freckles across her nose.

"How was it?"

"It made me miss you," she admits. "Miss this."

He's shaved, she notices, gazing at him, and she feels a tingle radiate through her thighs.

"Nichols called the mayor's second cousin a blowhard and Ross wants us— wants you, to take over as primary." Goren's smile is only mostly sarcastic, as he hits the gas and narrowly avoids clipping a late-model subcompact, reminding her yet again why she always drives.

Except, like this...

He captures her hand as she barely rests it on his thigh, snaking it toward his zipper. "Later," he says firmly, putting her hand back on the seat, lacing his fingers through hers.

Five o'clock shadow. Her clit is tingling with anticipation.

"Did you bring me anything?"

"A mug," she deadpans. "A little black dress."

"How very thoughtful of you, Eames, but I haven't been in Vice in years."

She squeezes his hand, watching the traffic go by. They shouldn't work. She's always surprised when they do. When he comes over to her place tonight she'll be wearing that little black dress and nothing else, and if she thinks about this much longer she'll be shit when they get to the crime scene, still daydreaming about having her legs folded over his shoulders and his head, his tongue—

She clears her throat, tugging at the hem of her shirt.

"Eames?"

"Yeah?"

He lets out a small, strangled sigh. "I know."


End file.
